By Shen Gao
Staff Writer
A new electric bus created by the startup Proterra is set to release next year. The most amazing thing about this release is that the electric, zero-emission bus can travel 350 miles, or 560 kilometers, on a single charge. This means that it has the potential to complete a single day’s work in the city without having to be recharged.
The Catalyst E2 Series electric bus debuted recently at the American Public Transit Association (APTA) meeting in Los Angeles. Its notable feature is its battery, which can charge up to 660 kWh, an unprecedented accomplishment. To put this amount into perspective, the largest Tesla Model S has a 100 kWh battery, and Chevy’s electric car the Bolt has 60 kWh battery.
Proterra claims that the Catalyst E2 series is able to work a full day on a single charge on almost every U.S. mass transit bus route.
The CEO of Proterra, Ryan Popple, stated that “Proterra’s primary goal has always been to create a purpose-built, high-performance electric vehicle that can serve every single transit route in the United States”, and that “battery-electric vehicles have now broken down the final barrier to widespread market adoption.”
So far, Proterra has sold more than 312 vehicles to 35 different agencies, including universities and city-based commercial companies. It is estimated that Proterra’s buses have displaced 540,000 gallons of diesel fuel in addition to eliminating more than 10 million pounds of carbon emissions.
The creation of this bus really paves way for the future of mass transit.
